Normale bestuursinrichting (normal administrative organisation) was the name given in 1881 to the Dutch colonial policy that replaced the unified military government of generaal K. van der Heyden in Atjeh by a normalised civil administration on the model of the long-pacified possessions: the separation of the civil and military supreme command — the tweehoofdig gezag (two-headed government) — introduced in April 1881 and reversed on 19 August 1884, when kolonel Demmeni once more united the civil and military governor’s office in one hand. In the analysis of Overste Verstege (1886) the normale bestuursinrichting was the political mistake from which the later concentration necessarily followed: it exchanged the just-conquered sword for a mocked “police stick” and opbeurde (“raised up”, i.e. restored and strengthened) the Atjehsche people for a new resistance.
The cabinet letter of 11 March 1881
The change was fixed by the Kabinetsbrief (cabinet letter) of 11 March 1881, litt. N., of the Governor-General Van Lansberge to the civil and military Governor of Atjeh, luitenant-generaal K. van der Heyden, announcing the decision of the Raad van Indië of 11 September 1880 (unanimously) that the time had come to introduce on Atjeh a normal administrative arrangement. The system of vigorously concluding the war — pursued, so the letter acknowledged, with so much energy by Van der Heyden — had aimed to break the enemy’s power, destroy his means, and by his total submission enable normal conditions, without which full pacification, elevation and development of the land were impossible. The abolition of the abnormal state would, the Governor-General argued, give the chiefs and the population no stronger proof of the Dutch intention to remain on Atjeh and of the irrevocability of the annexation; it would “put the crown on the building erected by the heroism and devotion of the Indies army” under the general’s energetic direction — who was again offered the Landvoogd’s appreciation and the thanks of the government upon his replacement by the civil governor Pruijs van der Hoeven. Verstege, who printed the contents at length, objected that of all proofs of the irrevocability of the annexation, precisely this untimely normalisation was the least convincing, being forfeited the moment the Atjehnese learnt — as they did — that the Dutch were henceforth to be governed from behind palisades.
The two-headed government in practice (1881-1884)
The two-headed government was introduced in April 1881 (Verstege dates the execution 9 April 1881; compare Establishment of civil government in Aceh (6 April 1881)), with Van der Heyden handing over the civil administration to Pruijs van der Hoeven after the warning, closing his parting speech, that “groote voorzichtigheid blijft geboden om de vrucht van jaren niet in gevaar te brengen” (“great caution remains required not to endanger the fruit of years”). In his reports of April and May 1881 the new governor still called the state of Atjeh “zeer bevredigend” (very satisfactory). On 22 May 1881, however, he ordered that patrols should no longer visit the kampongs, that they should be bound to fixed roads, and that the arrest of armed Atjehers outside a 500-metre ring around the fortifications (bentings) was strictly forbidden; some time later the patrolling was stopped altogether, on the ground that it kept the Atjehers in constant unrest. The garrison troops were increasingly hindered in their field of action — a consequence, Verstege noted, of the two-headed government and of the subordinate position of the military commander. Several Dutch posts were abolished although the well-disposed population kept asking for their retention for its own safety. The inevitable outcome was that the so-called rooverbenden (robber bands) grew in number and boldness; instead of using the appointed military force to expel them, the civil governor entrusted that task to a gewapende politie (armed police) — a body unsuited for it and not used anywhere else — through which the so-called bands of robbers or maraudeurs, as they were then styled in official language, increasingly grew into hostile bands that resumed the guerilla war with more success and zeal than ever. Thus, in Verstege’s summary, a fictitious, for the Dutch authority unhealthy state of peace was systematically created — condemned by the English in the Straits in the most vehement terms, with a demand to make an end to such beunhazerij (bungling) — and thus the basis was systematically laid for the concentration of 1 March 1885.
Assessments and end
The truthful reporting of the Gouverneur Laging Tobias, who took over from Pruijs van der Hoeven on 16 March 1883 — Pruijs himself having asked and obtained his discharge, apparently convinced before the Indian government was that Atjeh was for the time being no place for a civil governor — brought the conviction that the splitting of the highest authority in Atjeh had been a great mistake. When Laging Tobias found no support for his effort to bring the Atjeh question to a solution by the restoration of the sultanate, and increasingly observed that the state of Atjeh was spoilt for good and deteriorating further, he proposed to unite the civil and military administration again in one hand; to his disinterested initiative it was due that this was finally, alas at the eleventh hour, proceeded with. On 19 August 1884 kolonel Demmeni entered office as civil and military governor. The armed police as used under Pruijs vanished; the Koloniaal Verslag of 1885 noted with relief that this police no longer existed.
See Also
- Establishment of civil government in Aceh (6 April 1881)
- Concentratie-stelsel (1884-1896)
- Karel van der Heijden
- A. Pruys van der Hoeven
- P. F. Laging Tobias
- Demmeni
- Johan Willem van Lansberge
- Gewapende Politie
- 1881
Source
Een beroep op het Nederlandsche volk in zake het Atjeh-vraagstuk, door J. J. W. E. Verstege (Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1886), pp. 68-74, 79. OCR-filename: 20260801_235605_DLP-158-Een_beroep_op_het_Nederlandsche_volk_in_zake_het_Atjeh_vraagstuk_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt.